The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

(Denise, this is your warning. Apparently all I can write lately is things that make me all weepy, so get your hankie ready.)

I went to bed mad last night. Angry. Pissed off. The reason seems trivial by the light of day, but I didn’t care - I was mad, and I wanted to be mad, because I was hurt and embarrassed and sometimes it just feels good to blame someone else for things you can’t change. It was late, and Alice was curled into my chest, done nursing but clingy enough that I knew I wasn’t going to have any luck scooting her into her own space. And this just felt like too much. It was all just too much. And like Design Star Micheal, I just wanted my mom.

The thing about complaining about your husband, or your kids, is that you have to have the right audience. They have to know how fiercely you love them, and that even when you say “I just want to get in the car and drive and drive and drive” that you would never, ever leave. That you can be so angry with someone and still be devoted to them. That the right thing to say is “Take a deep breath, tomorrow you will be able to talk to him about this calmly. It’s going to be okay” not “Wow, what scum!” I don’t complain about Tom very often because I know what it is like to read someone’s rant and assume that their relationship is flawed to the point of failing - we make judgments based on what we see, and blogs are not fair in that way. So, I didn’t want to come here and vent, I didn’t want to call a friend at 11pm, I didn’t want to talk it out. I just wanted  my mom.

(My mom around my age, with my older sister and I)

And then comes the part that will sound hokey, that they reasonable, light of day Ivory smirks at. Because laying there, bitter that my husband said he was sorry before I was done being mad, angry that my infant daughter wanted to lay next to me all night, just pissed off that my mom was dead, the thought “Take comfort in your children, they are what you will be most proud of in your life” came to me, and it wasn’t my thought. How do I explain this without sounding like I want to be on Montel? It was a fully formed sentence, that I did not understand until I said it outloud. I want to brush it aside, claim that I had thought this before and it was just coming back to me, but… it just wasn’t my thought. It was like hearing a friend over a bad telephone wire - you caught the pieces of the sentence, strung them together, and then decoded it. And then you lay, crying, curled around your tiny daughter, thankful and sure.

Take it as you will - I’m not entirely sure what to think about it myself - but it was a moment I couldn’t let go without noting. In the months after my mom died, I would find feathers in the oddest places - in my closed car, in a shoe, between the pages of a library book. I took comfort in these little tokens, half admitting to myself that I hoped they were from my mother, half sure I was schizophrenic for even entertaining the idea. That is where I am today. Perhaps if I had a defined faith, I would be able to fit this experience within the realm of normal, but I don’t, and I can’t. So I’m not over thinking it - I needed that advice last night, and I got it. Perhaps you need to hear it too. Perhaps I will fully understand it in 50 years.